1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the transfer of data files from a first location to a second remotely located data file. More particularly, the present invention relates to a high-speed cost-effective data file transfer system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Systems for transferring data to a centrally located enterprise system from remotely located-areas over various links or networks are well known in the prior art and are classified in class 370, subclasses 260+, 465+ and 536+. One such system is shown and described in my U.S. Pat. No. 5,680,400 which is assigned to the same assignee as the present invention and is incorporated by reference herein. One purpose of this system is to split the data stream into a plurality of parallel streams for an asynchronous data transfer over slow parallel networks or links for the purpose of speeding up the total flow of data over slow networks. When plural slow networks are accessible, the division of the data into plural parallel streams can speed up the flow of data transfer. Over long routes, plural slow networks may appear in the overall transmission paths being used and other means for speeding up the data transfer may be employed.
There are other bottle necks to be found in data transmission systems which were heretofore ignored. Many large general purpose mainframes computer systems often employ expensive transaction processing computers. Such expensive. transaction processing computers serve their main purpose very well but when used to perform certain other tasks do not perform as well as other much less expensive one chip computers. When such a mainframe computer is in an enterprise system, a multiple processing system or a stand alone configuration and is also used to perform these certain other xe2x80x9cdifficultxe2x80x9d tasks, they are performed at a higher economical cost than is necessary. Further, when the mainframe computer is functionally placed in a series path of the data transmission flow, the rate of data transfer is attenuated by the increase computational time cost of the slower computer.
An example will illustrate the point. The time required for a typical large expensive mainframe transaction computer to perform a certain process and formatting tasks have been measured to be between 1.5 and 2 seconds of computer processing per mega byte of data where the identical process has been and is capable of being performed in less than {fraction (1/20)}th of this time by use of a dedicated one chip general purpose processor.
Accordingly it will be highly desirable to provide in an expensive mainframe computing system a method and apparatus for identifying these certain difficult and highly processor cycle intensive tasks and providing means for off loading such difficult tasks to a dedicated microprocessor or single chip computer in a manner which unburdens the mainframe computer of the difficult task without a time cost penalty.
It is a primary object of the present invention to provide a computing system having at least one high cost mainframe computer coupled to a low cost high speed dedicated computer chip or microprocessor or PC for performing difficult processing tasks which run much faster on the dedicated computer.
It is another primary object of the present invention to provide a low cost accelerating processor coupled to a high cost mainframe computer for performing certain difficult tasks that are capable of being performed on the mainframe computer at high processor time costs.
It is another primary object of the present invention to provide in an expensive mainframe computer system means for determining difficult time consuming tasks which can be run both faster and cheaper on a dedicated and low cost computer.
It is another primary object of the present invention to provide in a computing system a method and means for off-loading difficult tasks assigned to one computer to a dedicated computer which can more efficiently run a difficult task.
It is the general object of the present invention to provide a processing system for continuously processing a stream of data extracted from a data file through two different types of computers to while significantly enhancing the speed or rate of processing the stream of data.
According to these and other objects of the present invention there is provided a mainframe computer for accessing data from a data file and for producing a data stream to be processed and transmitted to a user source in a most efficient manner. A low cost dedicated processor is coupled in the output data stream of the mainframe computer. The process to be performed by the mainframe computer is examined and that stage of the process which is identified as a difficult process is not performed on the data stream in the mainframe computer but it performed down stream by the dedicated processor, whereby the total process to be performed by the mainframe computer is performed both faster and cheaper by the combination of the two computers. The cost of the downstream computer is insignificant in comparison compared to the mainframe computer.